pray do not be long about it!" And, leaning back against the porch, she
waited somewhat impatiently.

"The image I have just restored to you," went on Mr. Dyceworthy in his
most pompous and ponderous manner, "you say belonged to your unhappy--"

"She was not unhappy," interposed the girl, calmly.

"Ay, ay!" and the minister nodded with a superior air of wisdom. "So you
imagine, so you think,--you must have been too young to judge of these
things. She died--"

"I saw her die," again she interrupted, with a musing tenderness in her
voice. "She smiled and kissed me,--then she laid her thin, white hand on
this crucifix, and, closing her eyes, she went to sleep. They told me it
was death, since then I have known that death is beautiful!"

Mr. Dyceworthy coughed,--a little cough of quiet incredulity. He was not
fond of sentiment in any form, and the girl's dreamily pensive manner
annoyed him. Death "beautiful?" Faugh! it was the one thing of all
others that he dreaded; it was an unpleasant necessity, concerning which
he thought as little as possible. Though he preached frequently on the
peace of the grave and the joys of heaven,--he was far from believing in
either,--he was nervously terrified of illness, and fled like a
frightened hare from the very rumor of any infectious disorder, and he
had never been known to attend a death-bed. And now, in answer to
Thelma, he nodded piously and rubbed his hands, and said--

"Yes, yes; no doubt, no doubt! All very proper on your part, I am sure!
But concerning this same image of which I came to speak,--it is most
imperative that you should be brought to recognize it as a purely carnal
object, unfitting a maiden's eyes to rest upon. The true followers of
the Gospel are those who strive to forget the sufferings of our dear
Lord as much as possible,--or to think of them only in spirit. The minds
of sinners, alas! are easily influenced,--and it is both unseemly and
dangerous to gaze freely upon the carven semblance of the Lord's limbs!
Yea, truly, it hath oft been considered as damnatory to the soul,--more
especially in the cases of women immured as nuns, who encourage
themselves in an undue familiarity with our Lord, by gazing long and
earnestly upon his body nailed to the accursed tree."

Here Mr. Dyceworthy paused for breath. Thelma was silent, but a faint
smile gleamed on her face.

"Wherefore," he went on, "I do adjure you, as you desire grace and
redemption, to utterly cast fr